Eset NOD32 Anti Virus Vs. Norton Anti Virus 2009
Introduction
ESET’s NOD32 has been by far the overall favorite by most people in the world mostly due to it’s low use of system resources. However, not too many people have checked up on what actually matters, protection. If you look at ESET’s products ratings from AV testers you will see it is far from perfect. Norton, or any product by Symantec for that matter, has been instantly hated on known for it’s trademark system slow-down. Recently Symantec has re-designed the Norton engine introducing significant speed-ups and new features designed to accelerate a number of aspects of it’s product. Norton has and always been slightly higher in it’s protection ratings, let’s see if it can stack up to ESET’s performance standards.
Installation
Speed and surprises.
We have all grown to click next, un-check the automatic installation of Ask Toolbar, Smiley Central or another house for spyware, accept the license agreement and reboot if necessary. Installing security products tend to go differently. Most security products ask questions during the install about your home network, how interactive you want the product to be, your preferred level of security and if you want to password protect your settings. Eset’s NOD32 Anti-Virus did exactly this minus the restart part. As part of the improved Norton engine the install was changed all for the better. You double click the installer, uncheck or click install depending if you would like anonymous system settings sent to Symantec, which for the record I never partake in, then sitback for the install. The one minute install. Sure, when you think one minute install you don’t think anything of it but when all you have to do is click a button once and a program, drivers, and services are installed in about one minutes time in which the installer auto-closes and the program moves to the background itself without asking any questions, it’s kind of nice. Not to mention the default settings will probably fit most users, with some wanting to change one or two to increase performance. Although it’s not a big deal. Norton’s install was much more “automatic” which is a nice change.
Processes & RAM Usage
Why you’re here.
This is the reason 99% of you are reading this article. To save your precious RAM to increase the speed of Windows, run more programs, or just because you can. As your reading this you’re probably the best anti-virus solution for system performance is owned by Eset. You’re also probably a little confused about why I’m comparing Norton with NOD32. Well let’s find out.
After installation of Eset’s NOD32 Anti-Virus you can see that the program operates off two services, ekrn.exe, the programs engine, and egui.exe, the control panel side of the program. Norton also installs two services at install but names them both the same. One operates the Norton engine, the other Symantec Updates.
Now for the results.
Eset’s NOD32 Anti-Virus varied from 32 – 38MB of RAM when idle while it’s GUI was steady at around 1.5MB.
NAV2009 used much less memory when idle then NAV09 by using on average about 8MB combined.
When scanning NOD32 didn’t see much of an increase in memory usage.
Norton took much more system memory scanning then it did when idle but it just about matched the amount of memory used when scanning as NOD32.
Interface & Options
Who’s prettier?
I found both applications very appealing in terms of GUI and to a degree both had sufficient options for the basic and advanced PC users. I found that Eset’s product has a more basic interface even under the “Advanced Interface”. The advanced options inside of the advanced interface seems very cluttered. You see a clean interface with few options then all the sudden there is a huge list which can be expanded filled with options that can be very intimidating, this feels like it was thrown in at the last second or the graphics designer quit before he got to the advanced part.
Norton’s interface is much more image oriented, you could say their graphics designer decided to stay until the product was finished. By looking at Norton’s “Home” page you instantly notice they have tried to look like the next generation of software, also known as “Vista-ized”. There is no “File, Tools, Help, etc.” menu, instead all settings are placed accordingly. To try and prove that they sped up the speed of the program they included a CPU usage gauge. I personally disabled this as soon as I saw it mainly because I wasn’t worried about Norton taking up anymore then 4% of a single core away from my quad. I preferred Norton’s interface over NOD32’s mainly because it was less intimidating while containing about the same options.
Special Features
Are the extra’s worth the space?
When looking for an anti-virus solution the key things you look for is the hit your system will take from constantly this program as well as the main reason we use anti-virus, protection. We expect an anti-virus program to have a few must-have options and features such as built in anti-spyware protection, scheduled scans and an efficient update system. Anything else is essentially an extra.
This is another section in which NOD32 seemed to lack. It does have a form of website protection where it takes a list of sites from another company that it considers dangerous to everyday users. This is lots of fun for W-BB users, USAW users and about ten more warez forums that were blocked thanks to this feature. Needless to say it does do it’s job nicely and can be considered as a parental control. Other then this feature nothing stood out as special.
I was very impressed with the features Norton fit in while using such a low amount of system memory. The main feature I’m sure that people will like is called “Insight”. This program connects to a Norton database which has a list of “safe files” that once Norton confirms they are safe it will not scan these files during a system scan nor in it’s auto-protect (on-the-fly system scanning). I did not play around with this feature too much but I’m sure if someone spend sometime playing with Norton’s system files they could find a way to add your own files to this feature to dramatically speed up scanning.
Conclusion
I have been using NOD32 for months, I’ve been very happy with the low amount of memory it consumed and even ran it on my old Celeron D, 256MB RAM, 160GB 5400RPM Hard drive, desktop. Until last week. I have compared a number of aspects of each anti-virus and neither of them took the “W” in each category but overall Symantec’s Norton Anti-Virus 2009 has beaten Eset’s NOD32 Anti-Virus. It is faster, it has more options and it has better protection statistics. The only aspect that should make you second guess Norton is the nag screen. I have gotten over it but I know a number of people will not make the switch just because of the annoying screen. Overall Norton Anti-Virus is a better solution for both protection and saving system resources.
If you any questions about this comparison, either product, or a request for me to compare other products feel free to ask.
Additional Notes
Things left out of the comparison (Norton Gamer’s Edition).
did some minor tests on Norton’s newest product, their Gamer Edition. In these tests I found that it uses around the same (at times 1MB or so more) then NAV when idle, but even more memory when scanning. It’s main strengths are it loads much faster at boot and there is no nag screen after cracking with the same crack! I have also included this link incase you would like to try this version as well. Overall, the program I would recommend the most would be Norton Anti-Virus 2009.
13 Responses to “Eset NOD32 Anti Virus Vs. Norton Anti Virus 2009”
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Thats great for people with low ram…but i wouldnt touch Norton or NOD32 even with a stick. NOD32 scanner sucks, lets common stuff slip by. Using NOD32 is like being half naked on teh internets and I had bad experiences with Norton before they always made their AV embedded to OS pretty strong which ruined OS so each time it needed to be uninstalled a reformat would be needed which is why i would stay away from it.
I would recommend that people before switching to Norton, go to my virus removal tutorial i posted links to several web scanners and you scan with all of them see which one catches the most and which one gives less positives and you stick with that AV. For me that is McAfee, might need 200MBS of ram but its treated me well for 4 years
im still with NOD32, or kaspersky. since NOD32 and kaspersky are one of the best 2 AV out there with MANY many reviews. all Norton has improved is how much it has reduce the taking of resources. Norton should have done this ever since 2004. plus you will never know if the protection are reduce
wow I am feeling left out I myself use Avast and have for like 2 years and never have problems it works great I install it on all my friends pc’s too and it is free only requires a registration. Maybe I will see what is up with the others it has been awhile since I did a comparion shop.
Heh I keep telling to people Norton 2009 is pretty good but NOOO they don’t listen.
It’s like this basically with memory usage. Avira and Norton is almost the same in resource usage. Also according to tests those two currently hold the highest in detections. Avira @ 99.6 and Norton @ 99.0 according to Av-comparatives.org
Avira = Norton Norton > * In detection
Btw that new Gaming Edition’s interface is uber crap compared to the regular one lol.
One more thing you forgot to include. It’s about how well Norton disinfects and removes viruses compared to NOD32. NOD32 most of the time can detect stuff but if it’s anything more than a simple trojan it will just say access denied or something. Norton is very good at cleaning viruses.
oh man, i use NOD32 for years, its so light and secured…
so many reviews like these make AV choosing getting harder…
how bout makin vote? hahaha…
still confused between NOD32, Norton, or Bit Defender….
I’ve been using Nod32 for more than 6 months. At first, very pleased with its super low memory usage and fast startup speeds. Then I noticed one thing over time. It doesn’t detect much at all! I went and used my thumb drive at my school computers and got back some scary batch files as well as some nasty things like kavo.exe on it when I removed them. I knew they are there so I just tested if Nod32 can detect them by letting it scan my thumb drive. And the result was horrible. It says my thumbdrive is clean! One final thing that forced me to look for other antivirus solution was while my friend was testing out the Ardamax Keylogger. I put the keylogger in a picture file and let eset scan it. Good game. It flagged it clean. Not very satisfied, I went and ran that file on my XP I used for testing. No warnings at all. It just ran and sent me screenshots of the system every 1 hr. Horrified.
Once again, I try to run it on Windows Seven. Exactly after I clicked the file, Windows Defender popped up and warned me that it was a keylogger and asked me if I wanted to allow it to run or not. This made my completely lose trust in Eset. It can’t even detect a keylogger which Windows Defender can detect.
I go look around the net for some alternatives and saw norton’s advert on 1 min install. Very interested, i go and find it on warez-bb, and installed it on windows seven for testing. Very satisfied with it. I can bear with the nag screen. It runs almost as light as eset. It goes and removes all the nasty executables on my thumbdrive. It even fixed my vista being hacked by some virus which prohibits it from showing operating system files.
Overall, I’d recommend the new Norton to all ppl. It’s totally different from the past versions – they are in fact nightmares to use. No longer bloated and resource hungry, I think I’ll just stick to Norton for the time being. Kaspersky seems ok to use but i’ve only seen versions that need to constantly update the serial numbers after they get blocked. Norton 2009 is really recommended people!
Norton 2009 is good. I used a trial version and uninstalled after trial period was over. And without any surprise, uninstallation is mess. It left behind lot of crap which i had to manually delete. Beside this, performance has definitely improved
I steered clear of Norton because I had tried it on ever PC / Mac I have had since a Mac Performa (I’ve had the Perfoma, PowerMac 9600, PowerMac 8500 with MacOS from 6 – 10 (hacked); PC’s with Windows 3.1/95/98/2000/2003/XP/Vista – from 486 to dual core – from desktop to laptop; home versions and pro versions…). In every instance except for Norton 360, which was on my Vista Dual Core laptop, Norton had destroyed my entire system beyond recovery. Norton was okay until they went to Symantec – that’s when everything fell down. But I have to admit that Norton 360 performed the way I always dreamed Norton should perform. It was non-intrusive, fast and used low resources. Unfortunately the cracks are bad and my trial ran out – so it’s out the door. But at least in that configuration I can tell they made some inroads.
Still, it’s not enough to give up my NOD32 / Comodo combination…
i definitely say you this time symantec has improve much and much on memory usage. I also try this on vista and the good news is the installation was done within 5 min instead of last version which takes 15 min and memory usage was also excellent. Really great job done symantec but still i prefer with kaspersky. This antivirus is out of control on selling almost i also sell 500 license within 2 month.
Thanks for the good article
We have been using ESET Smart Security (NOD32)after researching the options and figuring it looked the best. Last week I got a Google page hijack and decided to try various malware programes to see if they found anything that ESET hadn’t. Eventually I tried the kaspersky online scanner and found 7 viruses in 138 places and 600 suspuicious objects that ESET didn’t find. Many in Eudora mailboxes – deleting them wont be an option for us. So we have a major mess to clean up – apparently the default ESET install wasn’t scanning mailboxes and hasn’t been on 7 computers for 6 months. We had checked with the support people previously and they had told us the setup was fine. The setup is complicated. Now that they have fixed the setup, everything hangs. I also ran AVG which found a different 3. We will need to change to something else and may try Nortons again even though it seems to miss things too. If you want see what different scanners pick up – submit a file to virustotal.com – that will scare you!
ESET’s NOD32 has been by far the overall favorite by most people in the world mostly due to it’s low use of system resources. However, not too many people have checked up on what actually matters, protection. If you look at ESET’s products ratings from AV testers you will see it is far from perfect.
????? are you serious? Nod32 has won 100% virus detection awards the last 5 years or more look it up. I am not a Nod32 fan I have used mcafee corporate since 2001. But don’t lie about a product if your going to review a product test it for yourself along with reading the reviews don’t just be a robot for a company like norton and lie man be honest. Norton is pretty good but there not the best. I personally like protection to be rated good and to be as light as possible on my system. Love you man but be honest and people will listen to you more ok.
Also
Norton’s system Requiments are
MAC OS X
* Mac OS X 10.4.11 or higher (includes 10.5.x support)
* Macintosh system with PowerPC or Intel Core processor
* 256 MB of RAM (512 MB Recommended)
* 150 MB of available hard disk space
* Internet connection required for LiveUpdate
* CD-ROM/DVD-ROM Drive
Support instant messaging clients for Confidential data filtering includes:
* iChat 4.x
* Microsoft Messenger 7.0.1 for Mac
* Yahoo! Instant Messenger 3.0 for Mac
* AIM for Mac beta 2 for Mac
Must meet minimum Mac OS X operating system requirements
For people with older cpu’s and windows 2000 are shut out.
here is Eset
System Requirements
Processors supported: Intel or AMD x86/x64
Operating Systems: Microsoft Windows 2000, Microsoft Windows XP (32- and 64-bit editions). Microsoft Windows Vista (32- and 64-bit editions)
Memory: 48 MB
Disk Space (download): 32 MB
Disk Space (installation): 46 MB
This is fact. with symantec your punished for having a older pc they will not help you. So If there so great why would they not want to help my grandparents just because there pc was bought in 2002?
The example of these system requirements proves which product uses less resources. and im not lying its a fact you can look it up.
I use a cpu I built myself with AMD Dual-Core Opteron 2.8 GHz but I still use mcafee corporate they are alot like Eset but I have always used mcafee corporate and I am a man that won’t change a good horse.
But I recommend Eset over Norton It will use less system resources and remove the same malware or more. And they care about people with older pc’s. One that cares is one to use. All symantec has cared about and lets face it money. Pc mag will talk of how great symantec is too. But if they paid me money I will be honest I will say anything too.
Norton Internet Security 2009 the fastest virus, spyware and internet protection you can buy